Literary Theory

Reader-Response Criticism

Society/History

Author

Reader Response

Reader

Introduction

This approach focuses on the reader and his role in the

making of a literary work. The text does not exist without the
reader. Meaning of literary texts depends upon the readers
engagement and interaction with them. The reader is an
active participant in the production of meaning.

This school of criticism emerged in the United States in the

1970s. Some major proponents of this approach include
Norman Holland
Stanley Fish
Wolfgang Iser
Hans-Robert Jauss
Louise Rosenblatt
David Bleich

 Reader-response theory recognizes the

reader as an active agent who imparts
"real existence" to the work and
completes its meaning through
interpretation. Reader-response
criticism argues that literature should be
viewed as a performing art in which
each reader creates his or her own,
possibly unique, text-related
performance.

Subjective vs Objective
Reader Response was a reaction against
the formalist approach that concentrates only
on the text. It is subjective because it takes
into consideration the personality of the
reader and the ways he contributes to the
making of the text. Reading reveals more
about the readers personality than about the
text.

The Text and Meaning

Meaning does not solely reside in the text. Texts do not have meaning apart from the reader. Meaning
is partly the result of the readers and interaction with and interpretation of the text. (The apple does not
taste good if nobody tastes it.)

Because the meaning of the text depends on the readers understanding of and feelings towards it, we
can have more than one meaning, more than one valid interpretation.

The Reader
The text remains incomplete without the reader.
The reader is not the passive recipient of ideas
included in
the text by the author. He/she is active
in giving meaning to the text.
The readers life experiences, his/her personality,
social and cultural background, education, gender, and
personal taste influence his/her reading of the text.

TEXT + READER =
MEANING

You May Choose to Answer

These Questions in Your Reader
Response Paper
What does the text have to do with you, personally?
How much does the text agree or disagree with your
view of the world and what you think is right and
wrong? Cite specific lines from the text to prove your
point.
How well does the text address things that you
personally care about and consider important in the
world? Cite specific lines from the text.
What other texts does the this text remind you of?
Cite lines from the text and explain the connection.
What is your overall reaction to the text?

What is Reader-Response?
RR critics believe that a readers
interaction with the text gives the text its
meaning. The text cannot exist without
the reader.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is
around to hear it does it make a noise? If
a text sits on a shelf in a bookstore and no
one is around to read it, does the text
have meaning?

What is Reader-Response?
RR criticism is NOT a free-for-all school of
thought where anything goes. RR criticism is
still a disciplined theory deserving of a careful
reading of the text.
RR critics are focused on finding meaning in the
act of reading itself and examining the ways
individual readers or communities of readers
experience texts.
The reader joins with the author to help the text
mean.

What is Reader-Response?
A successful reader-response critic does not just
respond to a textanyone can do thatbut
analyzes his or her response, or the responses
of others.
Our life experiences and the communities we
belong to greatly influence our reading of a text
Because each reader will interact with the text
differently, the text may have more than one
valid interpretation.

RR theorists share two beliefs:

1. The role of the reader cannot be omitted from
our understanding of literature (unlike New
Critics who believe that the meaning of a text
is contained in the text alone).
2. Readers do not passively consume the
meaning presented to them by an objective
literary text. Instead, readers actively make
the meaning they find in literature.

Kinds of reader-response criticism

Individualists
Experimenters
Uniformists
Objections
Extensions

Individualists
In the 1960s, David Bleich began collecting
statements by influencing students of their
feelings and associations. He used these to
theorize about the reading process and to
refocus the classroom teaching of literature.
He claimed that his classes "generated"
knowledge, that is, knowledge of how
particular persons recreate texts.

 Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like

Bleich, shown that students' highly
personal responses can provide the basis
for critical analyses in the classroom.
Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students
responding to texts to write anonymously
and share with their classmates writings in
response to literary works about sensitive
subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts,
death in the family, parental abuse and the
like.

 In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the

first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that
focused on its readers' experience. In an appendix,
"Literature in the Reader", Fish used "the" reader to
examine responses to complex sentences sequentially,
word-by-word. Since 1976, however, he has turned to
real differences among real readers. He explores the
reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by
the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession,
introducing the idea of "interpretive communities" that
share particular modes of reading.

 In 1968, Norman Holland drew on

psychoanalytic psychology in
The Dynamics of Literary Response to
model the literary work. Each reader
introjects a fantasy "in" the text, then
modifies it by defense mechanisms into an
interpretation. In 1973, however, having
recorded responses from real readers,
Holland found variations too great to fit
this model in which responses are mostly
alike but show minor individual variations

Experimenters
Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed in great detail
models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of
metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry (including
different actors' readings of a single line of
Shakespeare). Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has
experimented with the reader's state of mind during
and after a literary experience. He has shown how
readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values
while they read, treating, for example, criminals as
heroes. He has also investigated how readers
accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things

In Canada, David Miall, usually working with

Donald Kuiken, has produced a large body of
work exploring emotional or "affective"
responses to literature, drawing on such
concepts from ordinary criticism as
"defamiliarization" or "foregrounding". They
have used both experiments and new
developments in neuropsychology, and have
developed a questionnaire for measuring
different aspects of a reader's response.

Uniformists
Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to
theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response.
For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but
an effect to be explained. But he asserts this
response is controlled by the text. For the "real"
reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the
reader a given literary work requires. Within various
polarities created by the text, this "implied" reader
makes expectations, meanings, and the unstated
details of characters and settings through a
"wandering viewpoint". In his model, the text
controls.

 Another important German reader-response critic

was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature
as a dialectic process of production and reception
(Rezeption--the term common in Germany for
"response"). For Jauss, readers have a certain
mental set, a "horizon" of expectations, from
which perspective each reader, at any given time
in history, reads. Reader-response criticism
establishes these horizons of expectation by
reading literary works of the period in question.

Both Iser and Jauss, and the Constance

School they exemplify, return readerresponse criticism to a study of the text by
defining readers in terms of the text. In the
same way, Gerald Prince posits a
"narratee", Michael Riffaterre posits a
"superreader", and Stanley Fish an
"informed reader." And many text-oriented
critics simply speak of "the" reader who
typifies all readers

Once Upon a Time

Gabriel Okara

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.
There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but thats gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hand's search
my empty pockets.

Feel at home! Come again:

they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thricefor then I find doors shut on me.
So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too

to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,Goodbye,
when I mean Good-riddance:
to say Glad to meet you,
without being glad; and to say Its been
nice talking to you, after being bored.

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snakes bare
fangs!
So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

First Stanza
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

1 Stanza RR Analysis
st

The author used to compare how people treat

each when they were still young and now that they
are old/matured. In the first to the third line, it
depicts that they (people) laugh/engage each
one of them with pure and friendly treatment. The
fourth to the last line of the first stanza shows that
now/today, we laugh with their teeth(not
sincere) and their ice block cold eyes (unfriendly)
search behind my shadow (hostile/predatory)

2 Stanza
nd

There was a time indeed

they used to shake hands with their
hearts:
but thats gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hand's search
my empty pockets.

2 Stanza RR Analysis
nd

The author emphasized that there is a time

when people greet with joy/love but its
suddenly fades away.
Third line- sadness, nostalgia
Fourth line-people became unfriendly and
insincere.
Fifth to sixth lines-people tend to search/try to
notice if you have something that you can
give to them. (Greed)

Third Stanza
Feel at home! Come again:
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thricefor then I find doors shut on me.

3 Stanza Analysis
rd

First Lines- The author quoted the voice of

others. It shows sarcasm.
Second-Fourth Lines- It shows a bitter tone
wherein the author longs for sincerity of the
people around him. He became desperate in
looking for pure emotion/treatment.
Fifth-Sixth Lines- The author tries to mock
others in their insincerity and fakery of
emotions.

Fourth Stanza
So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming
smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

4 Stanza RR Analysis
th

First line- the author tries to talk to his readers.

Second line- the word wear was used to depict
that the author is learning to be fake and
insincere. He tries to go with the flow with others.
Third-Fifth Lines- the author compares how he fit
in with his surroundings thats why, he wears
different faces/behavior.
Sixth Line- it shows that the author fixed his
emotions of lacking the warmth towards others.

Fifth Stanza
And I have learned too
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,Goodbye,
when I mean Good-riddance:
to say Glad to meet you,
without being glad; and to say Its been
nice talking to you, after being bored.

Fifth Stanza RR Analysis

First Line- the author learned to fit in the
insincere surroundings.
Second-Third Line- the author became
cold and fake
Fourth-Last Lines- the author tries to show
that opposites on the things that he say.

Sixth Stanza
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snakes bare
fangs!

Sixth Stanza RR Analysis

First-Second Lines- the author tries to talk
to his readers that he wants to be back on
where he came from (innocence/Nigeria)
before he will become totally insincere.
Fourth Lines- the author wants to
unlearn/forget the things that silenced his
identity.

Continuation
Fifth Line- the author wants to learn(turns
to positive) and make his real identity once
again.
Sixth-Seventh Lines- He wants to show
himself being happy because he was
poisoned by the insincerity and coldness
of others.

Seventh Stanza
So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

Sixth Stanza Analysis

First-Second Lines- the author wants too
learn from a child/the author wants to
bring back his innocence.
Third Line-the author became nostalgic
because he wants to go back to his roots
Fourth Line-shows the longingness to
return to innocent and authentic behavior

My Papas Waltz
By: Thedore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mothers countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every stepped you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm cake hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.